People

People are good. At least in general and for the most part. People are socially virtuous. Given a chance, most people most times won't beat or rob you, nor lie to or betray you.

And not principally because they wish to avoid the retaliation of yourself and your allies, but simply because they don't want to do such things, and wouldn't enjoy them. They find that there's no personal profit in such anti-social activities. And the man of quality or noble soul is far better when it comes to this than the hoi polloi or massman discussed above. At the least, this is my current best evaluation of the two separate human species known as the masses and the elite.

Still, people are scum. All of them. Every last one. I don't like or respect any of them.

Aristotle should have found a way of being a public atheist. Or at least in his writings. It was so intellectually obvious and so societally needed. But he didn't.

Ayn Rand should have found a way of being a non-cultist intellectual leader. At least after she became famous and had a split with her top protégé. It would have been so simple and was so societally needed. But she didn't.

Both philosophical giants were slain by the essentially infinite evil of religion. These were sad and inglorious defeats of considerably contemptible figures. Future humans need to do a lot better.

Society is to blame for most of these two failures above. Human nature is evidently flawed and weak. Human beings are basically low animals. Mere monkeys and wretched repellent apes. And Aristotle and Ayn were way way ahead of their rather bestial times.

If the social milieu had been better -- if culture and civilization had been far more liberal in those eras -- then Aristotle and Ayn Rand would have found it quite easy to obtain the proper social status and assume the correct social station. Aristotle could not have been happy pretending that some "god" thing existed. Rand was not happy being a charismatic, cult-of-personality, philosophy leader devoid of peers, honest critics, and supporters and enemies she could respect.

If philosophical and cultural progress continues at its current rate, humans will likely ascend to a New Enlightenment and era of virtually pure liberalism in a century or so. In this period magnificent beings, but also mediocrities, like Aristotle and Ayn, will far better flourish, and much more intellectually teach, morally inspire, and spiritually ennoble all of us.

In case anyone is wondering what inspired me to write such a hostile and anti-social essay in the first place...I've been thinking a bit more about my very early life recently. At the time, and all along, I truly thought that for all the consistent and baffling abuse and maliciousness heaped upon me while I was in my single digits -- mainly by gov't school female teachers, coaches, church leaders, and other adult authorities -- that their systematic mistreatment was unwarranted, and that they were the bad guys, not me. But in reviewing these ugly and remarkably painful memories more closely I now look upon all my experiences, and especially the collective overall attitude of the adults, with a kind of sheer astonishment and real horror.

Lindsay -- With all due respect, I examine evidence better than anyone on the planet. No-one is more intellectually adventurous and fearless. I have no secret or personal agenda, and totally look to the facts with less fear or favor than anybody on earth. I view the entire neoliberal world -- which I was the first to discover -- from a magisterial height. I study the Austrians, libertarians, libertarian anarchists, atheists, New Atheists, non-free-will atheists, ARIans, Atlasians, independent Objectivists, Rand, Branden, Kelley, Peikoff, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, conservatives, progressives, environmentalists, tea partiers, occupiers, Christians, Muslims, etc. with utter neutrality and impartiality, unfailingly seeking to spot the good and bad, the true and false, in all of them with a pure lack of bias. I'm on no-one's side but my own.

If you think "Brandroidism" and "Brandroids" really exist then you need to present the evidence for this, define its essence, and identify its members. The world certainly disagrees with you. The media spotted a strong cult around Rand; they noted none around Branden. Branden had no inner circle. No-one claims to be his intellectual heir. He never excommunicated anyone. I could go on.

If I'm wrong on this, or any other neoliberal issue, I want to be corrected. By you or anyone else. Can you make the same claim?

"Brandroidism" seems like what Rand called an "anti-concept". She explained this as "an unnecessary and rationally unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept," such as Randroidism or Objectivist cultism. This last is a vitally necessary idea and concept, as I'm sure you would agree. Does someone's agreeing with certain psychological ideas of Branden make him a Brandroid? You need to admit not. Please don't ask anyone to accept your notions on this issue on faith or in deference to your authority. We need reasons, evidence, and facts. Examples and illustrations would also help.

But I look forward to any upcoming Skype exchanges or interviews. And I certainly want to understand more about Authenticism and Being Human. The sooner, the better!

There are both truth and error in your post. Yes, people are, by and large, scum. That much has become irresistibly apparent to me after several years of operating in what is supposed to be a receptacle of humanity's non-scummy best: Objectivism and libertarianism. "Objectivists" and libertarians in their real-life conduct make Shakespeare seem like a rose-tinted-spectacled naif! But you are wrong, as always, about Ayn and Nathaniel—and your disgrace is, you haven't examined, and won't examine, the evidence. Instead, you dismiss its purveyor as "poltroon" or something. Nathan was the cult leader, and you are a member of his cult. Deal with that and you'll get somewhere. Meanwhile, I've taken one step forward to our interview: installing a programme whereby I can video-record my Skype interchanges.

I'm starting work on an introduction to Authenticism called "Being Human 101." I'm sure you'll enjoy some of its themes.

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The opinions expressed here are the unmoderated views of the contributors who express them.They do not necessarily reflect the views of other contributors, or of SOLO, and do not necessarily align with Objectivism.